"We have to get out of here and to somewhere safe." John cried.
The group rushed outside into the street, there was a lot of rushing around now, as people were gathering round to see what the explosion was about, and to see the accident involving Jerry and the armchair.
"God, this is making me tense." John said, lighting up a cigarette, "Thank God it skipped me. Now I can live for another few hours."
"Put that out! Smoking kills, you know!" Laura told him, in her stern voice.
"This is no time for joking, Laura." John gruffly replied.
"I'm not joking! What if you were meant to die of lung cancer? How would you feel then?"
"I think you're over-reacting slightly-" John said, trying to calm her down.
Laura swiped at his mouth, and knocked the cigarette out, onto the ground. The wind picked it up, and blew it away, towards the alley.
"What the hell was that for?"
"Sorry for caring!" Laura cried, fighting back the tears. "I just don't want you to die, that's all!"
She started sobbing into his arms, he comforted her.
"There,
there. We'll beat this, don't worry. We'll beat this."
"Jesus Christ, fire!" Dominic cried, pointing to the alleyway.
They all turned and looked at the alleyway, there was a large fire coming from it.
"Whoa, what should we do? John? John?"
John was in some sort of trance. But what the others didn't know was that he was having a vision of what was happening, and what was going to happen. He saw flames, and a fire engine, and cries of help.
"John? What's going on?"
"I just had some sort of a vision…nobody do anything. Phone the fire brigade, and wait here. Nobody go near it."
"Shouldn't we at least try and help?" Marie asked, anxious about what could happen, as it was apparently her turn next.
"No, stay here, and wait for the fire engine."
"Okay."
John called up the fire brigade on his mobile, and they waited for them, for five minutes or so.
"What was the vision about?"
"I saw the fire engine, lots of people struggling to put the flames out, and heard cries for help of some kind."
"Did they sound like me?" Marie asked, nervously, she could hear the fire engine rapidly approaching.
"A bit, but-"
"Oh God, I'm next! I knew it! I'm gonna die! Well, I'm not gonna go out painfully, I want it to be quick."
Without any thought, she leapt in front of the oncoming fire engine. It swerved to miss her, and ran over a nearby fire hydrant, spraying water everywhere, onto the engine, and onto the onlookers.
"What the hell were you doing?" One of the fireman shouted. "You could have been killed. You're lucky I'm here."
"But I will be soon enough."
"Look, you're lucky, okay, so don't get too cocky about it. I've had my fair share of near-death experiences, and I can tell you, that they're no joking matter."
"What were your near-death experiences?"
"Give us a hand with the hose, will you, you lot? We're running short on men today, there's been a lot of fires recently."
John grabbed the hose and started to spray water over the flames, whilst the fireman controlled the water valve.
"The first one was about two years back, when that plane exploded with the school kids on, then all these weird death's started happening afterwards, with the survivors. Well, there was this teacher – Val Lewton, I think her name was, and I got called up to go to her house, instead of to this huge fire at a petrol station. Unfortunately, all my colleagues died in the explosion, but I was lucky enough to escape. Then there was about a year ago, with that awful crash on Route 23, but again instead of being called up to a fire which killed all my other colleagues, I was sent to this guy's apartment, to extinguish a chip-pan fire. Then I came here to England, to escape from it all, and start afresh."
"Well, I think you may have stumbled into the same thing again. You see, Death is after you, and after us." Dominic replied.
"Don't give me that, I get enough of it at the force, it's not funny, and it's not clever. Okay, so just drop it."
"But all of our friends have been targeted and killed, just like Flight 180 and Route 23."
"Look, I said drop it. I don't want to hear about it any more."
"More water needed." John called.
"Okay."
The fireman turned up the water, but he turned it up too much, and the pressure was too much for John to handle, and he struggled to hold onto the hose.
"Keep that hose steady!"
"All I'm saying, is that-"
"Look, kid, I'm trying to put out a fire here, I don't need your advice, okay! Get one thing straight, Death is not after you-"
The hose hit him in the mouth, causing him to stumble backwards into the controls. The ladder swivelled round, pointed downwards, and impaled him through the head, before stopping against the wall, trapping Marie Dobson.
"Oh God…"
Marie started screaming uncontrollably.
"Get me out! I don't wanna die! Help me!"
She tried to climb out of the hole, in-between the ladder and the wall, but she couldn't; she was stuck.
"Help me!"
She struggled even more, and two of the beer cans she had stolen from Neil's apartment fell from her coat pocket, splitting upon impact of the ground. The alcohol started pouring onto the ground, but what was slightly odd, was that the alcohol was pouring in two different directions, one lot was pouring towards the fire engine, and the other was pouring towards the fire.
"Oh my God, we've got to stop the flames from catching the alcohol alight!"
Laura turned the pressure on the hose down slightly, and the hose stopped flailing about. John grabbed it, and aimed it at the centre of the fire, which was now getting quite big, and very dangerous.
Soon enough, the fire went out, and all was safe. Now there was the matter of getting Marie out from the ladder's grip.
"Please, do something quickly."
"It's okay, Marie, we extinguished the fire, you're safe now."
"Does that mean it's skipped me?" Marie said, with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
"It might have, but we can't be sure. All we know is you're safe from the flames."
No sooner had he said that, than the fire engines controls sparked, and ignited the trail of alcohol leading up to Marie, from where the alley fire had been.
"Jesus Christ!"
John rushed to the hose, but it was too late, the flames had caught up with Marie, and there was no hope for her. Her screams soon died out, before they managed to extinguish all of her.
"Oh God…"
"Let's get outta here. It's not safe."
"I'll check to see whether there are any more flames around the alleyway, I'm not next, so it won't matter if I go and look." Mark called to them.
Mark went around the corner, and checked out the alleyway, it was clear, of flames at least. He saw some eyes in the darkness, and peered to see them.
"Hello?"
A black cat leapt out from the darkness, onto the dustbin, and ran off, knocking the dustbin over in the process, tipping all the contents over.
"What's that noise? Mark, are you okay?"
"Yeah, it's just a cat."
One of the plastic bottles that was in the bin rolled out into the road, and stopped when it had neared the middle. Mark appeared out of the alleyway, and started walking towards the others.
"It's okay, there's nothing dangerous in there but a few bits of broken glass."
A car zoomed past, running over the bottle. The pressure in the bottle burst out the plastic lid, lodging it into the side of Mark's neck. Mark fell down, in pain.
"Oh God! Help!"
Dominic rushed over to Mark, and saw what had happened.
"How did this happen?"
"The bottle went into the road, and the top must have somehow been fired at me or something, I dunno, just get it outta me!"
Dominic reached for the top, and pulled it out of Mark's neck. The wound wasn't too deep, but it was still pretty serious. He went down on the ground, and tended to Mark's wounds.
"I don't get it, I wasn't next on the list, why has this happened to me?"
"Maybe it skipped us two?" John said, referring to him and Laura.
"But how? Nothing happened to you, at least not yet."
"Wait a minute, what was up with the two trails if only one of them was used?" Laura asked, realising something.
"What do you mean?"
"There were two trails of alcohol, but only one of them was used to kill Marie. Surely Death didn't put it there just to trick us?"
"Maybe, but-"
"Duck!"
Laura grabbed John and pulled him down towards the ground, the fire engine exploded with a massive bang, and bits of metal went everywhere, mainly in the direction of where John and Laura had been standing, and causing the ground and a few of the buildings around to shake slightly.
"Oh my God."
John and Laura stood up, shaking.
"Is everyone okay?"
"Yeah," Dominic said. "Luckily, I was down here with Mark when the explosion went off, otherwise I'd have been flattened by those pieces of metal."
"Yeah, lucky. If you hadn't have had that plastic bottle top lodged in your throat, none of us would be here." Laura told him.
"Maybe that was Death's way of killing off the last survivors of the train crash. He just wanted to get it over and done with, so he devised this plan to kill us all."
"Well, we cheated him, doesn't that mean that we can't die?"
"No, it just means he'll keep going round to get us, again and again. We can't escape Death."
Dominic looked up, getting his head out of the way of Mark's view, and the last thing Mark saw was a flower-pot, right before it smashes on his head, killing him instantly.
"Oh God…"
"How did that fall?"
"The explosion must have shook if off a windowsill or something."
"Oh…that is disgusting…let's get outta here before anything else happens."
"So who's next?" Dominic asked, as they left the gruesome scene, waiting for the police to arrive, and leaving it to other people to sort it out, as they had more important matters to attend to.
"You are…"
Dominic gulped, and they quickly left the crime scene, it may have been too late for Mark, but it wasn't too late for them…they could beat this.
TO BE CONTINUED…
EXPECT A DRAMATIC PLOT TWIST IN THE NEXT (AND PROBABLY FINAL) CHAPTER, BUT DON'T WORRY, I WILL START WORKING ON AN EVEN BIGGER FINAL DESTINATON FIC AFTER I HAVE FINISHED THIS ONE (IF I CAN THINK OF ENOUGH DEATHS).